Openness Awards and Paget Lecture 2017

The Openness Awards celebrate five winners who have encouraged the widespread sharing of best practice in animal research communications.

Bringing together those with an interest in Openness around animal research, the fourth UAR Openness Awards celebrates a year of achievements of the Concordat on Openness on Animal Research. The evening recognises and rewards best practice in Openness around animal research, following nominations made earlier in the year. There have been some fantastic entries to the awards, and the winning entries have set a new standard for open communications.

Openness Awards celebrate how far the UK has come in communicating animal research.

The University of Cambridge won the Award for Website or Use of New Mediafor its videos explaining how animals, including non-human primates, are used to understand and treat OCD.

The winner of the Award for Media Engagement was King’s College London for its eager involvement in the documentary ‘The Monkey Lab’, allowing cameras into to see its marmosets. Harry Dayantis, previously of UCL, was highly commended for his role in bringing ten universities together to press releasetheir animal numbers.

The Award for a Public Engagement Activity was presented to the four organisations that came together to open their labs to 3D cameras in order that the 360o virtual Lab Animal Tour could be made.

The winning institutions were MRC Harwell Institute, The Pirbright Institute, the University of Bristol and the University of Oxford. Tony Davidge, from Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, was also highly commended for his role in introducing local school children to the ethical and practical issues associated with animal research.

The Internal orSector Engagement Award was presented to the Babraham Institute for their partnership with the Sophianum SGS school in Netherlands, getting its students to design and create solutions to challenging problems faced by Babraham, such as creating more effective mouse cages.

UAR’s Individual Award for Outstanding Contribution to Openness in Animal Research was presented to Rachael Buchanan andFergus Walsh for their time and persistence in getting access and filming laboratory animals and subsequent balanced reporting at a time when ‘animal research’ evoked a knee-jerk response from much of the public and media.

Following the awards, Professor Clive Page, Head of Sackler Institute of Pulmonary Pharmacology, KCL, delivered the 81st Stephen Paget Memorial Lecture ‘How animals have helped with the discovery and development of drugs ofr the treatment of asthma and COPD’.

The Paget Lecture was first delivered in 1927 and has subsequently been presented by scientific luminaries including Sir Henry Dale (Nobel Prize, 1936), Sir Howard Florey (Nobel Prize, 1945) and Sir John Boyd Orr (Nobel Peace Prize, 1949). Last year the lecture was delivered by Professor Sir Mark Walport, the Government Chief Scientific Advisor.

To coincide with the Openness Awards and Paget Lecture, UAR has published the third annual report on the Concordat on Openness on Animal Research in the UK. The report details how signatories to the Concordat have fulfilled their commitments to improve openness and transparency, summarising information provided by the signatory organisations at the end of the Concordat’s second year.